This is something of an introspective experiment that I'd like to run.

The question is simple: Do you think that the rate of cancer / heart disease deaths (i.e. normalized for the increasing population) in the US, is generally increasing or decreasing?

Do you think public's increasingly poor, unhealthy, sedentary lifestyle choices are causing more people to die of cancer and heart disease? Or do you think that medical treatment and health advocacy towards avoiding risky behavior and improving personal health are "winning" the war against cancer and heart disease?

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Take a moment and decide in your mind what you think is more likely. Are both cancer and heart disease deaths increasing? Is only one increasing while the other is on the fall? Are they both going down?

Once you've formed your opinion, scroll down to see how it turns out.

In fact, the correct answer is:

Both cancer and heart disease deaths are on the decline.

Figure 1

[Total number of cancer deaths avoided from 1991 to 2006 in males and from 1992 to 2006 in females]

Figure 2

[Death rates (normalized by population) for cancer and heart disease for ages younger than 85 years and 85 years and older, 1975 to 2006]

Figure 3

[Annual age-adjusted cancer death rates (normalized for population) among males for selected cancers, United States, 1930 to 2006]

Figure 4

[Annual age-adjusted cancer death rates (normalized by population) among females for selected cancers, United States, 1930 to 2006]

Were you pleasantly surprised? When I asked this same question of IGN's The Vestibule (a part of the boards), 73% of responders answered both parameters wrong.

And that response honestly didn't astound me. There seems to be a certain negative stigma today about healthcare in general, and the public's ability to care for themselves. I think it's a prime example of the bias blind spot fallacy, where the vast majority of a population considers themselves to be better-than-average (a mathematical impossibility).

Doctors are guilty of the bias blind spot fallacy as well. In recent studies, when asked whether accepting gifts from pharmaceutical companies affects their own personal prescribing habits, only 30% of physicians responded "yes." However, when asked whether accepting gifts from pharmaceutical companies affects their colleagues' prescribing habits, almost 60% responded "yes." This is obviously fallacious.

It reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes strip, where Calvin's home is broken into while his parents are away. After the initial shock wears off, Calvin's parents reflect: "This is one of those things you always figure will happen to someone else... Unfortunately, we're all "someone else" to someone else"

We like to think that we're responsible and healthy individuals, but we also think that the rest of the country isn't. For some reason, we tend to believe the worst in things on a large scale when we don't have raw data on hand to inform us. We believe more people are getting sick, more people are dieing, less people are taking care of themselves, more people are in poverty, the country is going downhill - we're right around the corner of doomsday, and things were much better 10 years ago. And we thought those same things 10 years ago. And 10 years before then. And 10 years before then.

I wonder what the world would be like if our kind happened to be intrinsically optimistic about the future, instead of the way we are now.